We may be unknowingly and unwittingly influenced by our own biases. By having people with differing points of view on our teams we can avoid building products with blind spots. Including people with diverse backgrounds building digital identity products can lead to providing the gift of an identity to forgotten individuals and give them a voice and power. Tech companies and departments with gender diversity are more likely to stay on schedule, under budget, and have improved employee performance and satisfaction. Gender-diverse teams and business units have higher revenues and profits compared to male-dominated teams. Multiple studies have shown that when women leave companies, it can trigger a much broader ripple effect – impacting work environments and important business outcomes. Digital transformation needs to start with the user as we build new products. It’s about social change and enabling people to access things and do things we never thought possible just a few years ago. Digital identity is one of the keys to digital transformation. When we are talking about users and customers, we are talking about humans and humans are really diverse. To build products for that level of diversity, we need diverse teams to ensure we come up with a wider range of solutions. Diverse teams perform better and are more profitable. It’s something every organization should be buying into. Women in Identity is a not-for-profit enterprise whose purpose is to create a more diverse workforce across the industry, ensuring that identity solutions built FOR everyone will be built BY everyone. Working with partners, sponsors, and other industry bodies, Women in Identity strives to reduce the bias inherent in current identity products and large meta-datasets, making them instead truly representative of the markets they serve. We know how hard it is, we have really senior people on our team who struggle to recruit a diverse range of people. We see how hard it is and we are here to help. (Amy Benedetto, Kay Chopard, Kimberly Sutherland, Teresa Wu, Professional Development)